Nowadays, in my adult, somewhat mature, questionably responsible life, I look at what some kids do for entertainment. This, inevitably, releases the flood gates to the river of judgement. The ridicule flows, uninterrupted and my mind runs rampant with inquiries; What the hell is going on in their brain? Why would he do that? Is she crazy? Then the fairy of self realization appears on my shoulder and reminds me of the asinine things I used to do as a kid. This speaks to the whole, “Old people did it too…” post from a couple weeks back. Check it out for more hypocrisies imposed on the “age challenged”. After grasping the fact that some of the things I did as a youth were much worse, I retract my previous conjecture and reserve my judgement for other things. Below I list a few of the crazy, uninformed, yet fun, things that brought entertainment to my life as a youngster. Disclaimer: I do not suggest that anyone, children or adults, perform the following indiscretions, as some may lead to jail time and/or serious injury. Having said that, I must add that all of the following can be very entertaining as well as “gut-bustingly” fulfilling.

Whenever my cousins, siblings and I got together, in the absence of parents, I’d say 90% of the time, we were up to no good. One of our favorite pastimes was the Prank Call. We’d call restaurants that delivered and order, or not order, a few things. A call would go like this…

Restaurant Order Taker : “What would you like?”

Bored Kid(s): “Can I get a ____ , and a small ____ . Wow, those ____ sound good too, give me two of them.”

Restaurant Order Taker : “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

Bored Kid(s): “Oh, that’s alright. I like to order the ____ , with extra sauce, and the ____ . As well as two of those ____ , too. You know what scratch the ____ and just give me the large _____.”

Now, the blanks aren’t present for you to add what you’d like to order, but were the “punch line” of the prank. We spoke regularly throughout the calls but said nothing in the places where the blanks are, so it seemed as if our phones were breaking up. This would go on until the order taker realized that all we really wanted was to ______ them. <~~~ There, you can add what you like…

One of my cousins and I did some really dumb stuff together. Now, I was never a trouble making kid, when all by my lonesome, but when I got with this one cousin we both were borderline crazy. In front of my house, as well as the neighboring home, there were a lot of big shrubs and bushes. Big enough for us to hide behind, totally out of sight of passing cars, and throw rocks at the moving vehicles. Hooray for big bushes. No innuendo. To us this was really entertaining, and we never thought we’d get caught, until the impossible happened. One of the drivers got out of his car and investigated where the rocks came from. After a few minutes, he got back into his car and sped off angrily. Extremely afraid, we ran into the house, changed our underwear then assumed the fetal position in a corner and began shaking uncontrollably.

Another fun/dangerous/life threatening/sadistic activity my cousin and I engaged in was lighting cherry bombs and throwing them out of his 7th floor window. They’d land on a sidewalk full of unsuspecting loiterers as well as passersby and their reactions were priceless. This “game” found it’s end when my cousin failed to raise the screen quick enough, after lighting the firecracker. A bloody hand and two nervously, mischievous kids resulted from this activity.

Alright, that’s all I’m going to reveal. The forum is now open for submissions. What kind of crazy things did you do as a kid? Do they top any of the things on my list? Probably not, but I wasn’t a normal kid, nor am I a normal adult….Shadenfreude !!!! WTF You Say? <~~~~~~